BIOL 200 Lecture Notes - Pseudoknot, Intron, Genomics

• School: McGill University
• Department: Biology (Sci)
• Course: BIOL 200
• Professor: Richard Roy

Document Summary

Nucleic acids are active polymers located mainly i the nucleus of the cell, although some important exceptions can apply (mrna and trna in protein synthesis). These compounds were discovered by the swiss physician friedrich miescher in 1869. This was done by isolating the nuclei of white blood cells found in pus from discarded surgical bandages. These compounds were found to be acidic, thus coined the term nucleic acids. Nucleic acids are crucial in protein synthesis as single stranded rna and double stranded dna make up the first two steps of protein synthesis. Rna, ribonucleic acids, are shorter and less stable than dna and thus have a shorter life span. They are approximately 100s to 1000s of nucleotides in length. Rna can come in various shaped, including trna, mrna and rrna, which will be discussed later. Dna, deoxyribonucleic acid, is a double stranded double helix nucleic acid. Some dna strands can be hundreds of millions of nucleotides in length.